


Featherfall

by wolfinyourbed



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 1940's, Carnival AU, F/M, M/M, Tattooed Castiel, Wingfic, minor appearences by John Winchester and Meg and Death and Rowena, traveling circus au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-18 10:50:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10615353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfinyourbed/pseuds/wolfinyourbed
Summary: In 1940's Kansas, Dean Winchester has his hands full with farm and family. But thanks to Dean's runaway little brother and a traveling circus, his bucolic life is about to take a hard,weirdleft.





	

Dean wiped his sweaty palms on his trousers, let the screen door slam behind him as he stomped into the house. John hardly flinched; the war had left him deaf in one ear and in fact, he seemed to appreciate loud noises these days. He looked up from the stove, a massive soup pot steaming away, and nodded to his eldest.

“You seen Sammy?”

“Nah, Dad. Just got back from town.”

“How'd that go?”

“Good. Got feed for the chickens and unloaded those spare parts.” He'd also unloaded on the mechanic's kid, Jack Jr., who was attestably not junior in certain personal, anatomical aspects, but John Winchester didn't need to know that.

“Dinner's 'bout ready. Go find your brother. He’s probably at the coop. Birds of a feather, and all.”

Dean exchanged grins with John and spun around again, heading back out. The quicker he found Sam, the quicker they could eat. Dean's belly was hollow and complaining, as usual, and whatever John was cooking smelled like nine kinds of tasty. John did damned good with the meager fixings they raised themselves and bartered with neighbors. Nothing to complain about there.

The long shadows of late day sun cast gloom into the chicken coop, turning the bird dander into specks of glowing dust. The companionable natter of the hens picked up when Dean stuck his head in and called for Sam, but no human voice replied.

He hollered around the farm, in the barn, the garden, at the goat shed. No dice. It gave Dean an itch of discomfort—because Sam wasn't just any kid, and bad things had happened before—but he wasn't ready to panic, not quite yet.

Dean had a sneaking suspicion he knew where Sam had gotten to, anyways. And he just might tan his scrawny hide when he caught up with him.

He loped at a casual jog down to the far meadow, through the thigh-high grasses, catching burrs on his flannel and the milkweed in his hair. His eyes followed a pair of brazen red-winged blackbirds as they bullied a hawk off the field. The sky was a dusky, cornflower blue, and by the time he reached the edge of the treeline, he was solidly sweating. The willows and white alders were just dense enough that Dean could only see occasional flashes of sunlight off the river on the other side. He paused at a tree to catch his breath.

Whoops and call-outs and laughter drifted off the river, probably locals swimming at the eddy.

“Sammy,” Dean hissed. He rolled his eyes when he got no response, and pushed off the tree to walk farther into the narrow strip of forest. “SAM. I better not've come all the way out here for nothin'.” He still kept his voice low; didn't need anyone looking his direction.

The shade was blessedly cool, a damp bit of humidity rolling off the water. Dean had his head cranked back, scanning the treetops, one hand out to bump from trunk to trunk. The canopy was ragged with leafy silhouettes, not yet turning gold. One particularly agile branch moved through the others, a leg swinging. Sam, skinny as a sapling, sat in the crook of an alder, way high up. Higher than Dean would ever dare to climb.

"Hey. Think you could be a bigger pain in my ass?" Dean called up, in a stage whisper, squinting.

"Nope," Sam said to the sky. A few moments passed. Dean shuffled his feet, knocked on a tree with his fist. Sam's voice floated down again. "Jess got a new swimsuit."

"Sammy—"

"Brady's out there too. Guess they're ... getting friendly."

Dean thinned his lips, exhaling hard. Sam wasn't wrong. Dean'd seen them together at the social last week, making eyes. He didn't have the heart to tell Sammy about it, who would only ever be able to fawn after Jessica from afar. Just seemed too easy and too cruel.

“Hey, Dad's almost got dinner ready. Come on.”

Sam glanced down from above, hair hanging long around his face and eyes reflecting hazel-bright for a second, like a wild animal's caught in the lamplight. He blinked, and it was gone. “Is it potato soup again?”

“Yep. With a side of potatoes.”

“And potatoes?”

“Those too.”

An acorn or piece of bark or something dropped on Dean, who dodged it with a shift of his head. He heard the leaves rustle as a shadow lifted up out of the branches.

After scanning the meadow for prying eyes, Dean gave a whistle and paused for his brother on the other side of the trees, opposite the river. He slipped a stalk of wheat into the corner of his mouth, chewing, as Sammy glided to the ground. It was almost breathtaking, the wide span of Sam's heathery brown wings against his sun-tanned skin and the cloudless sky, feathers making tattletale whispers through the air. Like some kind of hayseed half-angel.

But then Sam hit the ground with a grunt and a tumble, smashing any dignity, wings and limbs tangling as he rolled. The books and blanket he'd been holding got flung every which way through the tall grass.

Dean snorted and applauded the crash landing. 

“Aw, fuck off,” Sam said, but there was no real heat behind it. He unruffled his feathers with a couple flips of his wings, a hair's breadth from Dean's face.

“Watch it, turkey.” Dean collected a book that'd fallen at his feet. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner. Definitely not one he'd borrowed from the library for Sam. Sounded too damned depressing. He hoisted an eyebrow as Sam stood and settled the blanket over his wings. “They're gonna catch you one of these days,” Dean admonished, wagging the book. Sam had probably pilfered it from one of the swimmers at the river, snuck it from their school supplies.

“They haven't yet.” Sam grinned, all white teeth and dimples. Seemed doubly unfair that his little brother was growing into a good-looking young man, though Dean would never dare tell him that. Even in Dean's hand-me-down overalls and in sore need of a haircut, Sam was one growth-spurt away from manhood, rawboned and headstrong. 

To date, they'd been lucky; almost nobody thought to wonder about John Winchester's youngest son, mostly because almost nobody knew about him. Dean could count the number of people on one hand. When folks starting getting too wise, John would pick up the family and move. Lonely life for a kid as personable as Dean and as inquisitive as Sammy. But no one could know about Sam. They would never understand. Dean himself hardly understood.

Fifteen-ish years ago, Mary Winchester had died in child birth. Official determination: blood loss. But that probably wasn't the whole of it.

The midwife—a witch woman named Missouri Mosely, who’d lived at the edge of the Shawnee reservation and though she wasn't Shawnee herself, possessed wisdom passed down for more generations than Dean had freckles—told them the world wouldn't understand. She told them of ancient days when angels had walked the earth and every once in a blue moon (literally, because Sam had made his appearance on a blue moon), a human child would be born, bearing telltale signs of the angels' dalliances with mortal women. 

She'd even offered to keep the baby, dispose of the little oddling so that John wouldn't have to, on top of grieving for his beloved wife.

But John couldn't do it. 

After vagabonding around for years, they’d ended up in Lawrence, Kansas. Lawrence had been good to the Winchesters; come December, it'd be five years at the farm. The spread was far enough from town to discourage neighbors from nosing about, secluded by acres of old apple orchards.

Sam used to keep to the homestead complacently enough, devouring books and minding their motley assortment of animals, but lately he’d begun straying. Spying on the townies from secret places in treetops and belfries. Watching the world go by with sharp, needful eyes. It set Dean's soul to worrying.

Turns out, he had good cause.

It wasn't two weeks later that Dean awoke to a folded note, in Sam's spare handwriting, tucked into the edge of his bedroom mirror. 

_Dean,  
I've figured out a way to have a life. Please don't think that I hated it here with you and Dad. I didn't. I DON'T. But I'm tired of being a bystander. I can't just watch anymore. It's okay. I know I'll be fine. Tell Dad I love him. Take care of him._

__

__

_I'll try to write. Love you._

__

__

_Sam_

 

Dean hasn't eaten since Wildersville, and he’s trying to scam supper from the only waitress in the only diner in town, when the tattooed guy and his collection of freaks roll in, taking up all the air in the room. The waitress’ keeps glancing to the carnies, making it impossible for Dean to work his wiles on her.

“Hold that thought, sweetie,” she says finally, picking up her pencil and moving off to intercept the newcomers. Dean grits his teeth and tries not to gawk, but it’s tough, because, dang.

There’s a leathery old geek, perforated in every possible place with metal doodads and dangly rings (Dean imagines he must smell like rust), a girl who would’ve been pretty, if not for her mustache and the monkey perched on her head, and the painted man with the peculiar blue eyes. Which, once Dean allows himself to ponder those eyes, isn’t actually such a bad view. The way the man wears that ink on his skin … well, it gives Dean pause.

The man looks up, catching Dean pretending not to stare, and pretends not to stare back. After a few moments of such not-staring, the man whispers to his gang and meanders Dean’s way.

Dean’s not sure if he’s still just plain annoyed, or if there’s an edge of temptation creeping in. The man has a shock of dark hair and his shirtsleeves rolled up; drawings of snakes and symbols Dean can't even begin to recognize coil up the man’s forearms, hinting at the artwork all over his body. As soon as the man grins, all sly-like, Dean decides he’s definitely tempted.

“Come give us a look-see,” the man says with a nod of his head, sliding a handbill across the counter to Dean.

“Buy me lunch and I’ll think about it,” Dean quirks back.

Won't be the first time in the past year that he's traded favors for food, won't be the last. Dean is in no small way curious as to where all those pretty pictures lead. Besides, at twenty years old and hundreds of miles from home, there’s no one around to spill Dean’s secrets and tell John Winchester a damned anything.

Which is, at once, good for Dean's sexual ambitions, but also a reminder that the only person who might have caught him philandering and tattle to Dad was Sammy. And Sam was exactly the reason Dean was in Nowhere, Tennessee, with empty pockets and an emptier heart.

The man hums, bemused. “I hear the Odditorium is particularly fascinating.” He sets a five spot on the handbill—the word 'free' tattooed across his knuckles—before shoving off the counter to amble away with the rest of his crowd. Seems the monkey is a deal-breaker to getting a meal at the place.

“If you like weirdos,” Dean says, not quite under his breath.

“And I do.” The man chuckles, slinging his arm around the mustachioed woman. The bell above the door jangles as they leave, customers staring over the rims of their coffee cups. For a heartbeat, it’s as quiet as Sunday service. Gradually, conversations resume, the air lightens.

The waitress returns, arching her sparse eyebrows. “Meatloaf sandwich, then, hon?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Dean pockets the money.

The handbill is fancifully drawn, not unlike the tattooed man himself, announcing ‘The Cirque Berserk’. Tigers dance down the borders, balloons, ladies in tutus balancing on wires and strongmen hoisting dumbbells. Ornate hand-lettering boasts Cain the Lion King, the lovely Rowena who, from what Dean can gather, swallows all manner of blades, and at the bottom, Castiel's Odditorium. But as he shifts his thumb aside, the illustration in the lower right corner makes Dean's pulse skip.

It’s a slender figure, angular features in profile, dark hair caught in a ribbon, and from shirtless shoulders sprout long, elegant wings.

It looks for all the world like his little brother Sam.

Somehow, he seems to have lucked into the very culmination of his year-long search. Hell, maybe it isn't luck at all: it’s fate.

Dean leaps from his seat and tears through the door, flinging his gaze up and down the dusty street, but the circus rowdies are long gone.

“Son of a bitch.” He can’t help feeling like a ghost has just slipped past him, in his peripheral vision. And vanished.

 

 

After dinner, it takes Dean the remains of the day to make his way across town, following signs out to where the carny has put down stakes. It isn’t within city limits, probably for very good and lawful reasons.

The night-birds are just starting to warble as Dean breaches the knoll and the valley opens up below him. There it is, a bedlam of lights and music and voices. Tents lit from within, like giant lanterns. Specks of people. A carousel, spinning, its tinny calliope version of “Darktown Strutters' Ball” echoing through the clearing.

He stuffs the handbill into the back pocket of his dungarees and ambles down the foothill, his carpetbag slung over one shoulder. 

Dean likes carnivals, can usually win any game on the midway that requires an eagle eye, as long as they aren't rigged. This one feels different, though. There's something mirage-like about it, and it isn't just his anxiousness at potentially finding Sam. The twilit colors, foreign smells—not all of which are pleasant—smeared together with discordant music and voices, some human, some animal … it's disorienting. He feels it in the tips of his fingers, like static. The hairs on the back of his neck are prickling. He's all nerves.

He shoulders through the crowd, scanning the giant canvas panels that advertise the shows and games and foodstuff, snakeoil and snake charmers, hootchie-kootchie girls and dancing horses. The ground is damp and well-trodden, muddy in spots, coming through the holes in the bottom of his boots. A barker’s voice cuts through the din and Dean follows it, still on tenterhooks. Castiel’s Odditorim is socked in between the Hall of Mirrors and someone selling marionettes, and Dean is vaguely chagrined at his own disappointment when he doesn’t see the man from the diner at the podium. 

A wooden platform lines the bawdy tent, and in the center, there’s a curtain painted to resemble a fancy door, leading back to … whatever weirdness is secreted within the Odditorium. The barker is strangely dignified, and so thin he may well be part of the sideshow himself. He’s accompanied by a slight woman brandishing knives, her scarlet hair almost bloody in the uplighting. Rowena the Sword Swallower, Dean reckons. She spots Dean approaching and flashes a Cheshire cat grin, twirling daggers.

The barker follows her line of sight and picks up the mark. He gestures grandly with a bamboo cane in Dean’s direction. “Well, my fine young sir, are you ready for a world of wonders? Bigger, better and stranger than any other show on the circuit.”

“I’m looking for a guy—”

“Aren’t we all?” Rowena demures. The lights dazzle and flash, picked up in the spin of her blades.

Dean feels his ears heat up. “No, I mean, dark hair, tattoos.”

Rowena arches a brow knowingly. The barker’s cane sweeps up to tap the sign overhead, specifically the word ‘Castiel’. “Fifty cents, and the weirdness of the universe is yours, young sir.”

“I don’t …” Dean has $2.67 to his name, after paying for dinner. It pains him to part with a penny of it. “Castiel told me to look him up.”

The barker clucks his tongue. Rowena goes back to romancing her blades.

“Alright, alright.” Dean digs in a pocket and slaps a pair of quarters on the podium. The barker nods and pulls the curtain aside with his cane. “Entrez s’il-vous plaȋt.”

Marching up the stairs, Dean throws a last glance at the midway and slips into the shadowy, over-warm tent. He swears he feels eyes on his back.

The front of the tent is cordoned off by fabric walls into small rooms, hallways, lit by dim bulbs. As his eyes adjust to the gloom, his gaze is drawn to a bank of jars, some as small as milk jugs, some as big as a butter churn. The glass is smudged and contains cloudy liquid, and floating in that sludge is all manner of unborn things. Conjoined, multi-limbed, tailed, eyes like black buttons. The air is pungent with formaldehyde. But really, Dean couldn’t be less impressed. 

All the taxidermied aberrations, all the theatrics, mean not a fucking whit to Dean. Not the girl with the white hair, white skin, pink eyes. Not the rubbery man who can put his head behind his knees and pretzel his arms behind his back—but Dean does briefly ponder how handy such flexibility could be. The midgets, the giants, none of them hold his concern for more time than it takes to wipe the sweat off his brow. He’s feeling claustrophobic and just a little green around the gills, when he turns a corner and there’s an empty chair. Just a moth-eaten velvet chair under a naked bulb.

“The invisible man?” Dean scoffs, but he nearly jumps out of his skin when someone answers.

“Wouldn’t that be something.” Castiel appears from behind a canvas wall, still in his shirtsleeves, a snug vest, roughed-up hair. “You showed. Wasn’t sure I’d made enough of an impression.”

“Someone needs to put a bell on you,” Dean says, a little short. 

Castiel chuckles. “It’s the grift. People want to be scared. Makes them feel alive.”

“Unless they have a goddamned heart attack.”

“Then it was meant to be. Not my business.” The man rounds the chair, sits down, sets an ankle on his knee. Comfortable in his own illustrated skin. “You like my show?”

Dean just shrugs, because no, he doesn’t really like it. It’s too warm in the tent and he’s anxious. Everything’s giving him the heebie jeebies.

Castiel’s fingers drum once on the arm of the chair. “Then why did you come?”

There’s a second when Dean doesn’t want to pull out the handbill; he’s never gotten this close to possibly finding Sam before. He’s not sure he can take another dead end, another cavity of disappointment. But then Castiel fixes him with eyes as blue as a robin’s egg, searching Dean’s face, and he bites the bullet. He drags the flier from his back pocket and hands it to Castiel. “The kid with the wings.”

“What about him?” Castiel says, too quickly.

“Can I see him?”

“Why?” The blue eyes narrow.

“I just—”

“Who are you?”

“What’s with the twenty questions? Can I see him or not?”

Castiel stands suddenly, gets in Dean’s face. His breath smells of whiskey. “Who. Are. You.”

Dean might be just a fraction taller, but it doesn’t give him an edge. He keeps his words as level as he can. “Dean Winchester. I’m looking for my brother Sam. He … he might be here.”

“Hmm. Brother.” Castiel tips his head back, distinctly unimpressed. “You two don’t look much alike.”

“I know we don’t. I take after our mom.” Dean’s heart is starting to wallop. Sam feels so near. Not as near as this Castiel, but _near_. There’s a tremble when he adds: “Please.”

“No one fucks with my freaks, you understand me? I don’t care if you’re blood. There’s safety here. We look out for our own.”

Freaks. Dean bristles; Sam ain’t no freak. He breathes hard through his nose and bites back the urge to throw a fist. “I get it.”

“You have no idea how many ways I can hurt a person if they fuck with my family. Because they’re all my family now, are you hearing me?” 

“I said, I get it.”

Through it all, Castiel hasn’t so much as raised his voice. “So this is why you came?”

Dean blinks. “I … I woulda come anyway.” It’s not a lie.

Nodding slowly, Castiel backs away. Dean can’t begin to read his expression. “All right,” he says finally. Castiel gestures with two fingers and slips between the edges of the fabric panels, disappearing. Dean darts after him.

The passage created by the fake walls is convoluted, worse than any corn field maze, but Castiel navigates it with ease. He swipes aside curtains, moving deeper into the tent, which clearly goes back farther than Dean had any clue. The air gets murkier before it gets better, and Dean breathes a great sigh of relief when he smells grass and earth and animals, sees the vaguest glow of starlight against the radiance of the midway.

The last flap opens up onto the private grounds for the carnies, where their tents and wagons are strewn throughout the clearing like haphazard piles of rags. Most of the employees are out doing their jobs, but a few linger. They nod to Castiel as he passes, but eye Dean with open distrust. He meets their gazes with distrust of his own.

It’s dark, a landscape of unfamiliar silhouettes, and Dean’s positive there are living things in the shadows. Castiel dances over the tent stakes, as Dean nearly trips on each of them. They zig and zag until they round a huge wagon, where a bonfire comes into view. Smoke perfumes the air. Folks are gathered around the fire, sitting on stumps and old wooden chairs, throwing dice and drinking and laughing. Dean’s heart is in his throat.

A tiny dark-haired woman in men’s trousers, on the far side of the flames, glances up with a smirk. “Hey, boss! Who’s the rube?”

They all look up at this point, and one figure in particular—backlit into semidarkness—raises its head and the eyes reflect copper for a blink. It stands, and the bonfire is obscured by the spread of wings. And it says “Holy shit …”

Dean doesn’t remember dropping his carpetbag but it’s not in his hands when he crashes into Sam.

A year.

Miles and miles.

Dusty roads and rain and thumbing rides and stealing food, asking a thousand people a thousand questions, and it’s the dumb luck of crossing paths with the enigmatic operator of a carnival sideshow that ends his journey.

He’s got fingers tangled in Sam’s hair, which probably hasn’t been cut since he last saw the kid. Whatever softness Sam might’ve hung onto from childhood is long gone; there’s nothing but bone and muscle under Dean’s grip, yet it’s the best thing he’s even felt. He doesn’t even care that there are tears squeezing out from the corners of his eyes. He hangs there onto his baby brother until Sam coughs out a damp little laugh. 

“You’re gonna crush my ribs,” he whispers against Dean’s ear. 

Only then does Dean lighten up. He slides his hands down but keeps hold of Sam’s arms, backing away just enough to get a good eyeful. The kid’s had a growth spurt, stretching his limbs and hollowing out his cheeks, taller than Dean now. His eyes and bare shoulders are smudged with some sort of greasepaint that makes the skin shimmer, and as much as Dean hates it, he can’t call Sam a “kid” anymore. Feathers rustle when Sam settles his wings, which seem to have gotten stronger and less juvenile too. He barely resembles Dean’s Sam; he looks so loose and alive. It scares Dean a little. 

But then Sam beams with all his teeth and dimples, and Dean remembers to breathe again.

“Did you get my letters?” Sam asks.

“How could I? I’ve been looking for you!”

“I told you not to—”

“And you expected me to listen?”

The tip of a wing darts out and whaps Dean upside the head. The girl by the fireside laughs.

“Jackass,” Dean snaps, grinning.

Sam shuffles from foot to foot, gets a serious look on his face. “Dad?”

“He misses you; what did you expect?” Dean wants Sam to hurt, but just a smidgen. “He finally married Ellen. So I, well, so he could spare me, at least for a while. She's really good for him, Sammy. He shoulda married her sooner.”

“You ain't kidding,” Sam says, the worry drifting away on a smile.

Something cold shocks against Dean’s arm: Castiel has a sweating bottle pressed there, and a puckish glimmer in his eyes. “Come. Join us,” he says, gesturing to the bonfire.

Dean does.

And in the course of the evening, he learns the difference between running away, and running towards something.

Everyone has their own fables, their own wayfaring adventures. As the moon rises, the carnies share snippets of their lives, coming and going throughout the evening as the job demands. Dean’s on his fifth bottle before he realizes he’s too drunk to move, and what’s more, he doesn’t want to. The girl—Meg—is delicately grooming Sam’s feathers and it’s clear there’s something between them. Something just a little bit untoward. But such an observation could apply to any member of the crew; they seem inextricably tangled around each other.

Dean lolls his head towards Castiel, who has a hand-rolled cigarette caught between his lips, auspiciously quiet, and Dean’s just sauced enough to prod.

“So, the tattoos …”

Castiel arches a brow, exhaling smoke. He shows Dean his knuckles, the letters “F-R-E-E” and “W-I-L-L” inked across the tops. “That’s my story.”

“That’s it? Are you shittin’ me? You weren’t born all painted up.” Dean wags a bottle in Castiel’s direction. “You did this to yourself. Why for?”

“I don’t know. Why do you come-on to strange men?”

“Why do you let people gawk at my brother for money?”

Sam, who didn’t seem to be paying attention, sits up straighter, and Meg flashes Dean a warning glare. But Castiel doesn’t feed Dean the fist that says “FREE”. He sighs, drops the cigarette and crushes it beneath his boot. “Because we get to call the shots. If chumps want to throw money at us, pay for us to be ourselves? We’ll take every red cent.”

“Who’s this ‘we’?”

Castiel gestures fondly to his surroundings. “We. The royal ‘we’.” 

“But you weren’t born—” Dean curbs himself with a glance at Sam. “You chose this life. Why the hell would you choose this life? I don’t underst—”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Castiel says.

“So enlighten me.”

“Are you always so mule-headed?”

“He is,” Sam confirms from across the way.

Dean ignores the jab and stares at Castiel. The air sits expectantly between them, cut by the crackle of flames and the eerily drifting sounds of the last hour of the carnival. Eventually, Castiel shakes his head, stands up.

He unbuttons his vest, slips it off and drapes it across the back of the wooden chair he’d been sitting on. He doesn’t look at Dean, and the avoidance strikes Dean as odd, not that this entire night hasn’t been chock-full of odd. Castiel continues with his shirt, almost coyly. Bit by bit, more tattoos are revealed: angels and anchors, swallows and mythological beasts. He leaves the shirt undone but tucked into his corduroys. Dean finds himself standing to get a better look, to drink in all the delicate lines that dip and sway across the sinew of the man’s smooth chest. It’s like living stained glass. Brazenly, he touches the heart that’s etched squarely over Castiel’s sternum. 

With down-turned eyes, Castiel watches Dean’s hand. Slowly he pivots, and Dean lets his fingers trail across Castiel’s pecs, collarbone, arm. With his back to Dean, Castiel slides the shirt off his stalwart shoulders. Dean coaxes the fabric down, mesmerized by the artistry of the designs, getting not just a little aroused in spite of himself. But he freezes when his fingertips brush across strange, rough patches. The shirt dips farther and reveals the area over Castiel’s shoulder blades, marred not by ink, but by scars. Huge clusters of old scarring, the exact spot where wings might’ve once been.

Dean catches his breath, fingers ghosting over the mess. Castiel shudders.

“I was eleven,” he murmurs. 

John had never once seriously considered cutting off Sam’s wings. It smacked of mutilation, even if it meant Sam could be living a ‘normal’ life. Someone else’s normal.

Dean feels strangely indignant for this almost-stranger, anger and sympathy churning in his gut, that someone would take Castiel’s wings. Dean bets the feathers would’ve been as black as an oil slick. 

“Jesus,” Dean says.

“That certainly had something to do with it.” Glancing over his shoulder, Castiel offers a wan smile. It hits Dean right in the heart. And maybe a little lower. Castiel moves to pull his shirt back up but Dean stops him, a hand to his arm.

Dean weaves in closer, a little unsteady from the liquor and the want. He pauses, half-expecting Castiel to shrug him off or elbow him in the head, but it never happens. Dean lets his lips drift across the salty nape of Castiel’s neck, to his rough jawline. To his mouth. To his tongue. 

And Dean falls.


End file.
